1. Technical Field
The present application in one aspect relates to a beverage bottling plant for filling bottles with a liquid beverage filling material, a container filling plant container information adding station, such as a labeling station, configured to add information to containers, such as bottles and cans, and modules for labeling stations.
2. Background Information
A beverage bottling plant for filling bottles with a liquid beverage filling material can possibly comprise a beverage filling machine with a plurality of beverage filling positions, each beverage filling position having a beverage filling device for filling bottles with liquid beverage filling material. The filling devices may have an apparatus being configured to introduce a predetermined volume of liquid beverage filling material into the interior of bottles to a substantially predetermined level of liquid beverage filling material, and the apparatus configured to introduce a predetermined flow of liquid beverage filling material comprising apparatus being configured to terminate the filling of beverage bottles upon liquid beverage filling material reaching said substantially predetermined level in bottles. There may also be provided a conveyer arrangement being configured and disposed to move bottles, for example, from an inspecting machine to the filling machine. Upon filling, a closing station closes filled bottles. There may further be provided a conveyer arrangement configured to transfer filled bottles from the filling machine to the closing station; as well as a loading station that is configured to load filled bottles into containers, for example, in a six-pack arrangement. There may also be provided a conveyor arrangement configured to transfer filled bottles from the closing station to the loading station.
In the packaging of wares of diverse sorts, such as, for example, beverages or items of food, it has been found highly advantageous to configure the containers in which such wares are offered as advantageously and appealingly as possible. Aside from configuration of the body of containers, the container labeling, that is ever increasing in display, also plays an increasingly important role.
When at one labeling machine several different container types are to be labeled, as is now customarily always the case, or, respectively, several diverse label sets need to be processed, down times of significant duration arise due to necessary refitting efforts. This is particularly the case in the event that containers need to be furnished with several labels at the front side and at the rear side.
In order so as to provide solutions to this problem, inter alia, in German Patent No. DE 199 53 255, in U.S. Pat. No. 4,362,594, and in German Patent No. DE 197 41 476, designs are presented that allow the exchange in full of the labeling stations that are arranged at a labeling machine, so that the down times can be markedly reduced, because the required conversion work that is required to be performed at a labeling station can be accomplished at a separate work location and as such essentially at the same time, that is, without shut-down of the labeling machine.
German Patent No. DE 199 53 255, U.S. Pat. No. 4,362,594, and German Patent No. DE 197 41 476 are hereby incorporated by reference as if set forth in their entirety herein.
Although the above-cited designs in the field of labeling technology have achieved a considerable advance in the art, there is not satisfactorily achieved, by the above-cited designs, quick and economic adaptation of labeling machines to labeling requirements that significantly deviate from one another.
Thus, customarily, often the task arises, for example, to precisely align containers having an embossed logo, or cliplock bottles, prior to labeling. In this it is state of the art that functional units that perform this task are fixedly and permanently arranged at the labeling machine, which substantially permanently reduces the number of possible labeling stations, such that one has also not available these labeling stations in the case of processing containers that need not be aligned.
Similar considerations apply with functional units that control, for example, the presence or the correct position of labels. Again, these functional units, in accordance with the state of the art, are fixedly and permanently arranged at the labeling machines, such that the disadvantages enumerated above are also applicable in these situations.